This sounds nice. I'm thinking I'll brew up regular tea, add some lemon juice from my lemon tree, and add some honey/brown sugar for sweetness. I'll let it ferment until it's at the sweetness that I want and drop in a campden tablet or something to stop the fermentation. Either that or I'll put it in the fridge and drink it quickly. Are there any other methods of stopping the fermentation process once it's in bottles and carbonated? If I put this in wine bottles would it blow the cork out the top or would it blow up if I left it too long? Also, is there a type of yeast that doesn't tolerate high abv and will top itself off?

You don't necessarily need to kill the yeast. You could back sweeten with a non-fermentable sugar like Malto-Dextrin, lactose, or Splenda. If you have much carb using wine bottles the corks will blow out.

__________________
Up Next: Long Trail Double Bag Clone
Primary: Red Soxtoberfest Ale (to be opened when the Sox are in the World Series)
Primary: Apfelwein
Bottled: Wicked Black Porter

Took another SG reading today. It's down to 1.007. It tasted a little more yeasty than last taste test (at the time of the last measurement) and not as sweet. So, I do anticipate using some potassium sorbate to kill the yeast before sweetening a bit. I'll wait until I get down to an SG of about 1.000 or so before doing that and racking to a carboy.

Any suggestions on how to sweeten? I could use corn sugar, or even just regular sugar... is it better to first boil the sugar in some water to make sure it's dissolved before adding to the carboy? And how much would I use (approximately) for 1 gallon of hard lemon iced tea?

Boiling the sugar in a little water will ensure the solution is sterile and it will mix easier. White sugar should work just fine for this use.

Best solution to determining the amount of sugar is to taste. You can pour yourself a couple of accurately measured tasters of the tea and add a measured amount of sugar. When you find a ratio you like scale it up to the rest of the gallon and add it.

Maybe its time for a keg so you can back-sweeten and carbonate.

I will be surprised if this is good but then I can't stand the tea from a can any ways. The only way i like tea is fresh brewed unsweetened iced tea, no lemon.